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Spiced parmesan parsnips

One of my very favourite Delia Smith recipes is this lovely way with roast parsnips, where she tosses them in grated parmesan and flour before cooking. My Grandma used to make Delia’s parsnips every Christmas, and there was always a fight over who got the last few.

It’s funny, really; in the UK, parsnips are a very ordinary accompaniment to a roast dinner, a slightly posh vegetable to be rolled out only on Sunday lunchtimes. Elsewhere in the world, the parsnip is considered more appropriate for feeding animals than people. Part of this is down to our climate. Parsnips need exposure to frost for their flavour to be fully developed, so in warmer places the parsnip is a less impressive beast, weedy and comparatively flavourless – hence the French tendency to feed them to pigs rather than people.

This is my version of the Delia recipe my Grandma used to cook. I’ve changed the fat used – you’ll get a much better crisp using dripping, and the flavour you’ll achieve with a good butcher’s pot of beef dripping is amazingly good if you serve these next to roast beef . I’ve also upped the ratio of parmesan and added some curry powder (always unbelievably good with a parsnip) and lots of lemon zest and fresh basil, which lifts the whole dish. Result: crunchy, savoury parsnips, sweetly fluffy inside and amazingly crisp outside – and so delicious you too will be fighting over the leftovers.

To serve eight with a roast, you’ll need:

1.25kg parsnips
175g plain flour
100g parmesan, grated finely
1 tablespoon medium curry powder (I like Bolst’s)
Grated zest of 2 lemons
1 heaped teaspoon salt
3 large tablespoons beef dripping
3 tablespoons chopped fresh basil

Preheat the oven to 200°C (400°F). Put a heavy roasting dish containing the dripping in the oven as it heats up. Combine the flour, parmesan, curry powder, salt and lemon zest in a large mixing bowl. Peel the parsnips and cut them in half across their width. Cut the top half of each parsnip into four long pieces, and the bottom half into two.

Cook the prepared parsnips in boiling water for five minutes. Remove the saucepan from the heat and drain the parsnips a few at a time, rolling the steaming-hot parsnips in the flour mixture and setting aside on a plate. When all the parsnips are coated thoroughly, remove the roasting dish from the oven and arrange the parsnips in the hot fat (careful – it may spit). Put the dish of parsnips high in the oven for 20 minutes, turn the parsnips and put back in the oven for another 20 minutes.

When the parsnips are ready, they’ll be a lovely golden colour. Remove them to a serving dish and sprinkle generously with basil.

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Golden winter vegetable soup with frizzled chorizo

Golden vegetable soupSoothing, sweet, buttery, winter vegetables are a real blessing when the weather’s cold. Plants keep a store of energy in the form of sugars in their tubers and roots, and those tubers and roots make for some surprisingly uplifting eating. This soup is passed through a sieve after being liquidised to ensure a silky, creamy texture. If you don’t own a food processor you can still make it – at the stage where the ingredients go into the processor bowl you can just mash them with a potato masher for about ten minutes, then pass the resulting mush through a sieve, pressing it through with the bottom of a ladle. You will end up muscular and with a very good pan of soup.

Because of all the plant sugars in these vegetables, you’ll find you need something salty to counter the sweet taste. I’ve cut chorizo into coins and fried it until it’s crisp and friable – a lovely contrast in texture with the silky, creamy soup. The result is a lovely sun-coloured dish at a time of year when the sun is a distant memory.

To serve four as a main course, you’ll need:

1 small celeriac
3 small sweet potatoes
1 small swede
1 small butternut squash
1 small onion
2 shallots
1 parsnip
3 carrots
1 leek
3 tablespoons butter
1 litre chicken stock (vegetarians can substitute vegetable stock and use croutons instead of the chorizo)
200 ml double cream
2 teaspoons salt
½ a nutmeg, grated
10 turns of the pepper mill
2 tablespoons chopped chives

Peel all the vegetables and cut them all into 1-inch chunks. Melt the butter in a large pan with a heavy base (this will help the soup cook evenly – I recommend Le Creuset pans, which are made of enamelled cast iron, and disperse heat beautifully) and sweat the vegetables, stirring regularly, until they begin to soften. You’ll find that the sweet potato pieces may brown a little. Don’t worry about it; they contain so much sugar that it’s hard to prevent a little of it caramelising, and it just gives depth to the soup.

When the vegetables are softening evenly, pour over the hot stock. It’s best if your stock is home-made, but some of the liquid stocks you can buy at the supermarket these days are a good substitute if you don’t have any in the freezer. Bring the stock and vegetables to a simmer, cover with a lid and leave for 20 minutes or until all the vegetables are soft all the way through.

While the soup simmers, slice a chorizo into pieces about the same size as a pound coin and fry over a medium flame in a dry frying pan, stirring and flipping the pieces occasionally. The chorizo will release its fat and the pieces will become crisp. After about 20 minutes, when the chorizo is crisp and dry, remove the pieces and drain on paper towels. Reserve the oil.

Transfer the vegetables and stock to a large bowl and liquidise in batches, passing each processed batch through a sieve back into the large pan. You will find you need to push the soup through the sieve with the back of a large spoon or ladle. Return the pan to a very low heat and stir in the cream, salt and pepper and the grated nutmeg. Bring to a simmer and serve with a drizzle of chorizo oil, some chorizo scattered over (keep some more in a bowl for people to help themselves) and a sprinkling of chopped chives.